White Knight: February 2009 Archives

credit Flight / caption: SpaceShipTwo underwraps here at Scaled Composites hangar

Contrary to rumours that Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two will be appearing at the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture event, held in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, every year, Hyperbola can confirm that that is not the case

credit Virgin Galactic / caption: Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn will speak at the event

Go here for the agenda for the London based-Royal Aeronautical Society that will have a good line up of people from Space Adventures, Xcor Aerospace, Virgin Galactic, EADS Astrium, Swedish space corporation, the European Space Agency and the US Federal Aviation Administration

Readers have emailed in queries about the location of the Vortex Generators (VG) so for clarity, the VG's are lined up right in front of the seam-line, and are "thicker" than the tufts. Look at the"i" in "Virgin"...there's 3 in the stem, as well as one between the stem and the dot (this one, on the white background, shows the difference between the VGs and the tufts). There are 3 more right below the "i", four more right above the bottom rudder counterweight and two below it


credit Alan Radecki

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UPDATE: Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn has told Hyperbola that WK2 reached 18,000ft on the 5 February

credit Flight / click on the image above for a larger version in the same browser window

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Hyperbola has heard from Mojave sources that Virgin Galactic's Scaled Composites built WhiteKnightTwo has flown again today, confirming this Personal Spaceflight blog report. More details will be posted as soon as we get them

A crash yesterday delayed the second flight that was to have taken place then

UPDATE: Find more details about the second flight in the extended portion of this blog post

credit Flight

The return to flight of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo mothership WhiteKnightTwo was delayed yesterday when a Douglas DC-3 that belongs to the National Test Pilot School went off the runway on take-off and crashed. Fortunately no one, as far as we know, was badly hurt

The British Broadcasting Corporation has been told by Surrey Satellite Technology that this EADS Astrium owned UK small spacecraft manufacturer is working with Virgin Galactic on an air launched booster

Back in December Hyperbola exclusively revealed that Virgin Galactic had decided to call its air launched rocket LauncherOne, following a story Flightglobal had published about the spaceline talking to European countries regarding a two-stage launcher concept

credit Flight

Virgin Galactic's president Will Whitehorn has told Hyperbola that the spaceline's carrier aircraft WhiteKnightTwo will fly again "very soon"